Extreme Cities

Reviews / Votes

Extreme Cities is a ground-breaking investigation of the vulnerability of our cities in an age of climate chaos. -- Bill McKibben, author and founder of 350.org A substantive contribution to the growing dialogue about our response-or lack thereof-to climate change. * Kirkus Reviews * Dawson makes a convincing case that, unless urban dwellers and civic leaders engage in a fundamental reconceptualization of the city and whom it serves, the future of urban life is dim. * Publishers Weekly * The way we design and live in cities will determine humanity's ability to avoid an anthropogenic mass extinction event in the coming century. Dawson makes this vividly clear in Extreme Cities, laying out in detail the nature of the problem and some possible positive actions we can take. Crucial to his argument is the fact that technological solutions will not be enough, so that we need to drastically reform the capitalist economic system to properly price and value the biosphere and human lives. His point that social justice is now a necessary survival strategy makes this not just a meticulous history and analysis of our situation, but also an exciting call to action. -- Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the Red Mars trilogy A refreshingly different perspective on climate change. * Choice * Extreme Cities takes on the needed work of slowing down to chronicle and consider this meantime, without shying away from its messiness.More than simply lay out the existence of disparities, it illuminates the relationship between them. -- Liz Koslov * Public Books * [Ashley Dawson] cuts through the green capitalist hype and shows instead that life under climate change has grown increasingly precarious for working-class people living in major urban centers in the twenty-first century... A sweeping narrative that ties together disparate calamities. -- Zachary Alexis * International Socialist Review *